"A blog is to a writer what a canvas is to an artist." ~ Colleen Redman

1. One of the most interesting costumes I came across at the annual Halloween Masquerade Ball at the Pine Tavern was a woman with progressive activist stickers and buttons on her clothes. She had a blue glove, which she put on and then waved to me.

2. Is the blue wave the wave of the future?

3. After I heard about the mass shooting in the synagogue, I started humming ‘What the World Needs Now is Love Sweet Love.’ I hummed it for about half an hour before I realized what I was spontaneously humming.

4. “I suppose it is ironic that in this country we can offer nothing beyond hopes and prayers to those who were already praying in the first place.” – Dahlia Lithwick, Slate

5. I had a few-days-old tab up on my computer, titled ‘back issues,’ which made me wonder why I was searching for back issues, since I don’t have a bad back, so I clicked on and discovered it was for ordering back issues of the Floyd County Moonshine local literary journal!

6. I have a poem and several colored photos, including the front cover, in this season’s issue of Floyd County Moonshine.

7. The Nine Lives of Halloween: a woman in a magic act sawed with blades, a haunted house, a Tom Petty tribute band where I yelled out Free Fallin’ instead of Free Bird and then put on my ears and went on the prowl to a Masquerade party. See HERE.

8. It’s like falling asleep on the subway and missing my stop / Like the first day of kindergarten and my mother drives me to school / but forgets to tell me she’s going to leave me there / and leaves without saying goodbye / It’s the first day of kindergarten and everyone but me / knows how to write their name / I’m scared that Mr. McGregor is going to catch Peter Rabbit / and I don’t know how to be quiet at rest time … Read the rest of What it Feels Like Not to be Writing HERE.

9. Trump is like a bragging TV wrestler and the people that go to his rallies are like booing and cheering fake wrestling fans. But the rest of us are the ones taking the hit, and that good-guy vs bad-guy simplistic mob mentality has gotten to the point of concussions and deadly blows.

11. Eerie ‘singing’ sounds heard coming from the Antarctic ice shelf – Scientists have heard strange “singing” noises coming out of the ice shelf. The low-frequency noises – which sound a little like moaning when sped up – could help researchers track the ice shelves as they collapse. The singing tones come out of the surface of the massive Ross Ice Shelf when the winds blowing across the snow dunes cause it to vibrate. That means they produce the “tones” almost constantly… More HERE.

About

From the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia I write to synthesize what I'm learning at the time, whether it be poetry, a political commentary, or a letter to my family in Hull, Massachusetts, where I'm originally from. Whenever I don't know exactly what it is I'm doing and it borders on wasting my time, I call it research. 'Dear Abby, How can I get rid of freckles?' was my first published piece at the age of 11.